Attempts to Decipher the 'Victory' Riddle and Its
Intricacies
Hazem Saghieh Al-Hayat - 06/09/06//
No sooner had the pelting over 'victory' and its meaning subsided, than it was
once again inflamed by Hassan Nasrallah's words, interpreted by some as
'repentance' and by others as 'self criticism'.
It is a continuing pelting between the anti-victorious and the pro-victorious,
whose version carries the threat of transcending the country in question,
Lebanon, and measuring the conflict through a strictly strategic gauge
formulated without taking the State, the people's will, their lives, economy,
displacement, or migration into account.
Once again, these tangible values are replaced by rhetoric outcries of inflated
dignity, honor and nobility that go hand in hand with cold-hearted strategic
analysis.
Conscience and moral principles, at least since Munich on the eve of the Second
World War, entail nothing more than defending the interests of small countries
and peoples, by snatching them from the fangs of strategic inevitability and
deterministic analysis which chew on these interests as crocodiles chew on fish.
The case with the Lebanese war, nevertheless, is a bit more than that, where the
country is ignored according to a theoretical, nihilist, and malignant scheme
that makes no secret of its desire to surgically eliminate countries, uproot its
policies as modals connected with concrete and tangible inhabitants. Policies,
according to this scheme, should be produced in a political vacuum which is
called the struggle with Israel and the US, where it is impossible for borders
to separate land, to classify millions into peoples, and to categorize issues
according to their different levels. This is a shortcut to confusion and total
anarchy, with savagery waiting at the end of its road.
Even if we accepted the victorious-strategic version, the real danger lies in
the fact that the domestic party in concern is incapable, as a national
political entity, to capitalize politically on such a 'victory.' Never, in a
world that has its structure based on nation-states, has a political party or a
movement been able to accomplish such a mission except in two cases:
The first is when the party, as in the cases of national liberation movements
and revolutions, contains the seeds of an alternative power that can replace the
existing situation or foreign influence. This is not the case with Hezbollah, at
least as long as it has not yet overthrown the Lebanese government.
The second case is when the party is closely related to another state and is
being used by it to challenge a competing or hostile state, a situation similar
to the relationship between the Vietcong and North Vietnam; or when a militia is
used, and sometimes created, by any given State to fight another. And even in
that case, when it is time for the political harvest, the 'helper' state gets
the lion's share. This second case leads to only two possibilities:
The first is that this analysis is inapplicable to Hezbollah, which,
subsequently, cannot exploit its military effort politically. And this
assumption is supported by all the steps that proceeded from the war's end,
starting from the Franco-American proposals to Resolution 1701 and ending with
the land, sea and air blockade on the 'victorious' and the Lebanese victims
alike.
The second possibility has to do with the assumption of Hezbollah as an Iranian
battalion, which means that Iran is solely exploiting its military effort (we
leave Syria aside since it is too weak and too ailing to exploit anything). This
assumption is also supported by the susceptibility of Iran to profit from the
current developments in the region (as proven by the Chatham House's most recent
report).
As a matter of fact, Hezbollah possesses the sort of qualities that make it a
candidate for both cases, since Hezbollah is an intrinsic part of the Lebanon,
except that it hijacks its constituency to amalgam it, without any
intermediaries, in the regional politics.
And while it maintains a close relationship with Iran, the world's division into
states whose national agendas are different, prevents it from presenting itself
as an Iranian battalion.
This is exactly where the dilemma of the 'victory' lies; it is obvious that
Israel's losses, as abundantly explained by commentators and politicians, could
not be attributed to the Lebanese component, but the Iranian component of
Hezbollah.
And this explains the paradox of the destruction of a country and the 'victory'
of one of its political parties. It also explains, more eloquently than
inconclusive military results, Hezbollah's inability to convince us with its
'victory', since its Lebanese element prevents it from admitting that Iran is
the only side exploiting and in a position to exploit Israel's loss.
More reasons for concern lies in the fact that radical forces in the area,
whether like Hezbollah or Hamas, the Iraqi 'resistance', or regimes like the
Syrian are by definition 'preventive' powers; they succeed in preventing others
from achieving victory but never actually achieve it themselves. Haven't some
said that the boarders between Israel and Iran are mere Arab vacuum?

What About the Iranian Project?
Hazem Saghieh Al-Hayat - 05/09/06//
An American project in the region, whether of a New or a Great Middle East, is
beyond any doubt. However, it is an insolvent and contradictory
One, and in some countries it is deteriorating and ailing. A lot has been said
and written about this project, but this does not deny the existence of another
equally dangerous project: its Iranian alternative.
The worst thing about the American project is marginalizing the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the extent of disregarding it. What makes the
Iranian one even worse is that it is based on this marginalization and
disregard. The Iranian project even complements these attitudes and benefits
from them. It attempts to employ the regional conflict in the same manner it has
employed the two American 'solutions' for the Afghani and Iraqi issues. The
Iranian regime invested the fragile Arab presence, or rather the Arab absence,
in the Iraqi issue. Similarly, Iran seeks to exploit the Arab impotence in terms
of the Palestinian-Israeli issue as a prelude to highlighting this impotence and
re-produce it.
Needless to say, the Iranian regime, contrary to its claim, has no sincere
'Islamic' sentiments toward its neighbors. Otherwise, it would not have retained
the three occupied islands in the Gulf and it would not have treated the Iranian
Arabs the way it did and still doing. In spite of the Iranian anti-Israeli
rhetoric, Tehran was not active in combating Israel's influence until the
signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, when it seemed that a new Arab situation is
on the rise, a situation where the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will cease to
impede the growth of a healthy relationship with the West and the outside world.
Prior to that, the Iran-Gate story is well known, which reflects how far the
Iranian regime can go in betraying its anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric.
Now, what is most dangerous about the strong Iranian wind blowing west is:
first, undermining the nation-state system as it exists in our region, for the
benefit of endless chaos hidden under some false ideological allegations,
particularly, the conflict with Israel . Second, mobilizing primordial
sentiments and igniting them, as is currently the case in Iraq, thus bringing
sectarian conflicts to their maximum level. And, third, besides the conflicts
and chaos, exporting some 'political' concepts that only take us back to the
Middle Ages. At the top of the list comes the Islamization of public affairs,
the rejection of all that has to do with progress and enlightenment and lifting
despotism to the ranks of hope and salvation.
If it is true that the above were the features of the Iranian expansion, then it
is equally true that the Arabs opposing Iran are invited to enter into a new
activity and a new way of thinking. The activity must focus on the revival of
negotiations regarding the settlement of the Palestinian issue. This will halt
the functional integration between America's disregard and Iran's benefiting
from it. As for the new way of thinking, it revolves around developing a modern
and dynamic vision of the world that runs contrary to the Iranian medieval
thinking and does not allow it to employ the ideological premises that might
appear to be common.
The first form of resistance against what Iran is doing and what it intends to
do, is to give up the intimidating, 'Saddami' and chauvinistic rhetoric of
agitation against 'Persians' and adopt a modern political language while
competing with the Khomeini influence. This should come along with tangible
plans for serious political and social reforms in the Arab countries concerned.
As far as Lebanon is concerned, it has been turned by Hezbollah and the Syrian
'mediator' to the first battleground for the Iranian expansion westward. Meeting
it there would be the only condition for obstructing this expansion.